Representatives of the EU Council and the European Parliament will, on Thursday 31 January, once again try to reach an agreement in principle on the proposal for a directive to facilitate the use of financial information for the purpose of prevention and detection of criminal offences. After two trilogues and five technical meetings, several points remain undecided.
By way of reminder, the proposal provides law enforcement authorities and asset recovery offices with direct access, on a case-by-case basis, to bank information contained in centralised national registers. The objective is to enable these authorities to quickly identify the banks in which a suspect holds one or more accounts (see EUROPE 12003).
In addition, the co-legislators must agree on the details and modalities of the exchange of information between financial intelligence units (FIUs) and the competent authorities. "It is a question of how to structure this exchange", a European source told us on Wednesday, January 30.
Another point under discussion is whether or not to include the sharing of information between FIUs from different Member States in the Directive.
This possibility was included in the Commission's initial proposal on a case-by-case basis, as deemed necessary so as to prevent or detect serious criminal offences, money laundering or financing of terrorism. However, it had not been included in the Council's negotiating position, adopted in November (see EUROPE 12142).
The European Parliament, for its part, supports this and considers that information sharing between FIUs should be allowed to prevent or detect money laundering or financing of terrorism and, in exceptional and urgent cases and where sufficiently justified, serious criminal offences (see EUROPE 12152).
On Tuesday, in the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), the rapporteur, Emil Radev (EPP, Bulgaria), regretted that several compromises submitted by the European Parliament had been rejected by Member States.
"Let me be very clear: unless a compromise is reached between the European Parliament and the Council, there will be no agreement and it will be the Member States who will be held responsible for this”, he said.
Our source found it difficult to predict the outcome of Thursday's negotiations. According to our information, no other political trilogue has been organised for the moment. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)